Frequently in project management it is necessary to deal with long term planned activities and daily tasks that arrive ad-hoc on a daily/hourly basis. I find existing tools often struggle with these two different scenarios.
Task management falls into two camps, project management that may span months/years and day to day task management. Neither is particularly appropriate to represent the other. Project planning has little concern about hour long tasks, and daily to-do lists certainly cannot forecast if your present hour long task will mean completing the project on time.
Frequently people find themselves in the position where we must juggle both. This may mean dodging in and out of different systems, glancing/reviewing project plans and taking tasks from one system to another. It can be both complex and time-consuming and lead to frequent contemplation of project plan tasks and their relation to present actions.
I think there is an elegant way to handle this using a single system. The features of this system are the following:
It combines project tasks with ad-hoc daily items under a single framework
Since project/daily tasks are under one system, daily/weekly review of project lists can be removed
The basis of scheduled activities is a project plan so important projects tasks are covered by default
It allows for taking project plan tasks and breaking them down into actionable tasks that are conducive to daily work
It is quick to both enter new tasks and determine which tasks to execute
To get such advantages, I try to utilise the strengths of different methods of task management. I merge three different approaches (Waterfall, SCRUM and GTD) to create a unified approach to task management that spans project activities spanning years to daily tasks in the order of minutes. I outline the approach here: http://donebeforebrekky.com/macro-to-micro-task-management/
Be warned, it is a long post so you may want to grab a cup of tea before tackling it.
I have shown some real world examples of how it has worked in practice and in my case it is applied in engineering projects with both local and international team collaboration activities.
Am happy to hear further feedback from the experts here on how they grapple with long term and short term activities and still maintain some sanity! Saving Changes...
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Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Brendan,
That is a very common problem to deal, not only for the schedule but also for the cost. There is no way that you can change your schedule or cost baselines for micro-activities.
While not perfect, I find using "bucket" activities a suitable solution to capture at least some of the projected efforts and costs. For example, I might have an activity called "Resolving issues" which will cover issue identification and resolution over a determinate period of time.
The problem is those activities can resource levelling arduous. Saving Changes...
thanks for the input. The intention is not to change target schedules and at least minimise additional cost. I find the the micro tasks come from two sources,
1. Breaking down of project activities into smaller, actionable steps from a sometimes nebulous statement.
2. Additional items that arise day to day but need to be closed to complete the overall activity.
Your bucket approach is interesting. If I consider how it could be applied to my own situation it may be as simple as tagging unplanned tasks which can then be easily filtered, costed, resourced as necessary.
thanks Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
My rule of thumb is to keep activities no smaller than the status period. In other words, if I will be updating my project status on a weekly basis, then my activities should take a week or more. If most of the activities will take less than a week, consider updating your status more frequently than weekly. Saving Changes...
Paolo CornaliProject Manager| HTA srlBrescia, Lombardia, Italy
Very good article. Just in these weeks I''m trying to find a method to manage macro to micro task and I was thinking to adopt an approach like that you have proposed. I''m happy to see that someone have just tested with success this approach.
I would also hear how others manage these situations. Saving Changes...
